Episode 9: Nurses, Don't Eat Your Young - How to Combat Bullying in Nursing

This transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

Cara Lunsford

Oh, hey, nurses. Welcome to the Nurse Dot podcast, giving nurses validation resources and hope. One episode at a time. Oh, today on Nurse Dot podcast.

Renee Thompson

We see more disruptive behaviors in health care than in any other industry. And when you think about why might that be? Well, we see more stress as a health care professional than any other role. We're uncomfortable having an honest conversation with someone. And there's a strategy that we teach, and it starts with giving other people permission to give you feedback first.

Cara Lunsford

Joining us today, Dr. Renee Thompson. Not only is she a renowned speaker, accomplished author and a dedicated nursing professional, but she is also the esteemed founder of the Healthy Workforce Institute. Dr. Thompson has made it her mission to eradicate bullying and incivility in health care, transforming how we approach and enhance our medical workspaces. I'm your host, Carolyn Stafford, registered nurse and VP of community at Nurse Icon.

So we are going to get right into this. Dr. Renee Thompson, it's a pleasure to have you here.

Renee Thompson

Thank you. I'm happy to be here.

Cara Lunsford

This is a this is a topic that I'm really passionate about as an as a nurse, somebody who's been in the nursing profession for the last 16 years. They healthy workforce, the culture of bullying that we have that we need to eliminate.

Renee Thompson

Thank you. Yes, we do.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah. So tell us a little bit about yourself, like your history and how you got here. And I started this.

Renee Thompson

Well, thank you for asking. Well, like you, I'm a nurse. Been a nurse for 32 plus years, I think. And I always say I've done pretty much everything you can do as a nurse. I mean, of course, bedside I've worked as an educator. I was a home care nurse. Managed care? Yes. I worked for a managed care company.

I was a manager. I was a frontline manager. I was an executive. And I realized that it didn't matter where I worked, you know, what organization I worked for or what role I had. I swear there was always someone or a group of people who made it their mission to make my life difficult. And I just didn't understand it.

You know, working in health care is hard enough without worrying about your coworkers making it harder. And I'll never forget this. I was in an executive role and I was charged with really improving professional development for about 10,000 nurses. So I built residency programs, preceptor programs, in charge of all student programs, certification, advanced degrees, all of those things.

So I met with a lot of the nurses. And all they wanted to talk about was bullying. And how poorly the other nurses treated them. And it reminded me of my own experiences. And, you know, there was a moment where I just said, enough is enough. We keep talking about it, but nobody doing anything about it. So I quit a great job that I loved to start this company.

And it started just as me speaking about bullying. Well, I guess my message really resonated with others and it grew from there. And now we are the Healthy Workforce Institute, the only company in the world dedicated to eradicating bad behavior in health care alone. We don't have to go outside of health care care. We're plenty busy right here.

Unfortunately, I laugh about it, but it's not really a humorous thing. It's a shocking like, Oh, my gosh. So, yeah, that's my story.

Cara Lunsford

Well, thank you for decades of service. I'll start with that.

Renee Thompson

You're welcome.

Cara Lunsford

So what do you feel is at the source? I have my own opinions, beliefs about where this comes from. Even when I just talk about bullying with my son. He's 12 and we say, well, you know, if if you run into a bully, it's probably that they're getting bullied. And that that's a lot of the messaging that we give to kids is boundaries, creating boundaries, but also some level of compassion or empathy for the fact that the bully is probably experiencing something either at home or somewhere and that this is redirected at other people.

Where do you think that this comes from?

Renee Thompson

Carrier You're right. There are a lot of people who, let's just say treat others with cruelty in health care. You know, the caring, you know, industry for reasons that it's not to say we don't have enough time to talk about those other reasons, but for reasons that are actually understandable. Everybody has a story. You have no idea what someone's home life with.

What's happening in their personal life is like. However, when you cross the threshold of your work space, you need to be game on because the way we treat each other impacts someone's mother, impacts someone's partner, spouse, child. And that's the one area that I get it. And I am so compassionate towards other people and their suffering. But we have to stop justifying people's bad behavior and start taking action.

And it's not just to say, okay, anybody who's treating anybody with cruelty, you're going to get fired tomorrow if you don't step up. I mean, you have to have an honest conversation with people and find out if there's something going on in their lives that is impacting their ability to treat their coworkers with respect. But if you look at the the health care industry as a whole, we almost set ourselves up for this because we see more disruptive behaviors in health care than in any other industry.

And when you think about why might that be? Well, we see more stress as a health care professional than any other role. Think about this. You know, during the pandemic, everybody was, you know, sort of mocking and making fun and jokes about being home all the time. And, you know, as they say, everybody, when when you have a fire and the firefighters run into the burning building, everybody else is running out.

Or during the pandemic, health care professionals were running in to the, you know, pandemic while everybody else was making fun of being home. And so when people are stressed out and burned out, they lash out. And who do they lash out to? It's usually the person standing next to them. So we see a primary reason for disruptive behaviors in health care due to the stress that we're under.

However, again, I'm going to go back to it's not an excuse or, you know, we tend to justify someone's bad behavior because of how good they are, especially now during a staffing crisis. You know that the thought process is, well, a bad nurse is better than no nurse, which is so not true. And so we we justify somebody's bad behavior because of how good they are, you know, how competent, how long they've been there or how much revenue they bring in.

Think about some of the physicians who seem to get away with a lot of bad behavior because they're revenue generating. And we've gotten to the point that we've normalized bad behavior for so long, we don't even notice them. And, you know, this is true for you in your department when you hear people say, well, that's just the way she is.

She's a really great nurse or, you know, he's really great at, you know, whatever. Just don't get on his bad side. You know, he can be hot and cold or sometimes you have to walk around on eggshells. But boy, are they good at what they do. And, you know, so it just perpetuates itself and we don't even notice it anymore.

Cara Lunsford

How much do you feel that self-esteem and insecurity play a role in bullying?

Renee Thompson

It does play a role. The general consensus is if I'm insecure about who I am, it makes me feel better if I can pick on who you are. So if I make you look bad, if I criticize you, it makes me feel better about myself. And, you know, when we look at things like gossip, gossip is so pervasive.

When I gossip about you and I say these nasty things about you, what I'm also saying is I am so much better than you. Because when you think about this, every single human on earth could, quote unquote, gossip about every single human being on earth. None of us are perfect. We all mess up. We all have our issues, professional competence and personal.

And so I think it does sometimes. Not all the time, though, but sometimes it does come from a level of I don't feel confident about myself. So when I pick on someone else, it makes me feel better. And I don't think for the most part that's intentional. That's the subconscious stuff you know, the soup that's swirling in our brains.

But not everybody's like that. There are some people who actually have more confidence. They think they're better than they are. A little I don't want to necessarily use the word narcissistic because I think that should be reserved for the few people who truly are narcissistic. We tend to throw that word around a lot. Just like bullying, we tend to label all bad behavior, bullying, and it's not.

But I think you see a as they say, sometimes a spectrum of reasons why somebody actually comes into work and they either intentionally or unintentionally treat each of their coworkers with cruelty. Mm hmm. There's a spectrum of reasons.

Cara Lunsford

I love what you say about it. Doesn't excuse bad behavior. Trying to understand why people do what they do. I think it's natural as humans that we want to try and understand and behavior that is different than our own. Why people would behave that way, assuming positive intent. You know, we're taught all the time, assume, assume positive intent.

And I think you can start with assuming positive intent. I think you can say, well, I think in general, I think people are inherently good people. But additionally. And then there's a big and. Right. And people are flawed and traumatized and and some of them are walking around with imposter syndrome. And how do they react to these different feelings?

I just gave a presentation the other day at the end about emotional literacy, the ability to acknowledge when you're hooked by something. You have to start with being aware that you've been hooked by something triggered. That's a big word. Everybody talks about being triggered and then identifying with specificity, with granularity, the feeling that you're having. We talk about this a little bit when it comes to experiences that you're having with coworkers.

The first feeling that you might have is I feel like I'm being bullied, I feel bullied. I feel taken advantage of, I feel devalued. So you start to kind of peel back the layers and identify these different feelings so that you can have an intelligent conversation with the perpetrator.

Renee Thompson

Right. All right.

Cara Lunsford

And be able to say something as opposed to you did this or you did that. Instead, you can bring it down to one feeling. You know, we were in the room earlier. We were talking with the patient. And when we were in the middle of me placing the I.V., I really did not feel a lot of support from you.

As my colleague, I didn't feel supported. And I also felt really embarrassed. I felt really embarrassed in front of the patient. And I wanted to talk to you about it. I wanted to talk to you about the feelings I was having in the room. And I don't think that you intended to make me feel that way. I don't think that that was your intention.

Renee Thompson

Yeah. Yeah. You've said a lot of really great. You brought up a lot of really great points. I love trying to figure out why somebody asks the way they act. And I've been asked many times, how did I get to be so knowledgeable about bullying and incivility and how to address it and all those things? Was there some program I went through and I said, No, I've been studying human behavior, I swear my whole life and really trying to figure out why and get to, you know, sort of that root cause.

And I love doing that. However, in the moment when you're with your colleague, it's not for you to try to figure out why it's not to say we don't have any time for that, but instead what we tell people is don't worry about the Y in the moment. Focus on the behavior. So I'm going to piggyback on something you said.

You know, talk about what you're feeling. I was embarrassed, but I would add and I would add, what's the behavior that made them feel this way? When I was putting that I.V. in and you immediately said, that's not the right one and you were aggressive with it or you were, you know, curt with me in front of the patient, I was I was embarrassed.

And it's interesting, though, because I think it takes in. Tell me what you think. I think it takes a certain level of emotional intelligence for you to be able to recognize what you're feeling, because not everybody, I think, can do that. And it's funny, just last week I just had a series of things that happened that got me to the point where I was getting even a little testy with my husband.

I was getting a little short and everything started bothering me. And then I was able to reflect and say, okay, where is this coming from? And but I had to think about it because in the moment I didn't know. I just knew that I was annoyed. I knew that I was, you know, upset or I didn't know where I was coming from.

And then I realized I was just frustrated. There was a series of things that happened. So I said to him, Hey, I just want to talk for a minute. I'm feeling very frustrated right now. This is why I feel frustrated and this is what I plan to do about it. It's great when you can do that, but sometimes in the moment you don't have that time and you might be dealing with someone who doesn't have the capability of reflecting and even considering your feelings.

So I think there's there's got to be a nice balance of you need to figure out when you're feeling, as you said earlier, I don't feel valued. I you know, I'm embarrassed. Like, what is somebody doing? And that's what we don't get crystal clear on the behavior that makes you feel that way, because you can address the behavior.

You can't always address the fact that they've got a really tough life at home, but you can address the behavior when they show up at work.

Cara Lunsford

Absolutely. This is where I think emotional literacy and emotional granularity is so fascinating because I love to quote Brené Brown because she's like my favorite person on the planet. But she she talks about how most people only have access to about three emotions happy, sad and angry, which is crazy, right? And then she asks the audience in in one of her sessions, she says, How many do you think that you really should have access to?

How much vocabulary should you have access to? Emotional vocabulary? And the answer was about 30, 30 different emotions that we should be able to pinpoint with pretty good accuracy. And that comes from practice. You have to practice that, right? So you're you're triggered or you're hooked by something hooked by hard emotion, as she says. And you got to get curious about it, be willing to get curious about it, and then start to look, you know, how when we look at a pain scale, right?

Sometimes you have all the different faces, the different types of faces, but you also have the numbers. It's so that we can objectively look at our pain, right, instead of subjectively. There's actually an emotional scale that you can look at where it has all these different faces and it has different emotions that are labeled to those faces. And I almost feel like we need to have that on a little card or something where if it's like, All right, all right, what's.

Renee Thompson

This what I'm feeling point you like you're pointing to the, you know, sad face.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah. See? See this one right here? This is this is mortified. I feel mortified. So sometimes certain emotions carry more weight than other emotions.

Renee Thompson

Oh, definitely. Right.

Cara Lunsford

For some people, if they're embarrassed and embarrassment goes to anger very quickly.

Renee Thompson

Yeah. Humiliation. Embarrassment. Those are like the top. And I always say they go right to your hippocampus in your brain. And you will never forget when you've been embarrassed or humiliated. And I love your word earlier. Mortified, especially in front of other people. They definitely hold a higher weight.

Cara Lunsford

Exactly. And knowing that about yourself and being able to say with a certain amount of clarity to another person, to a colleague in that moment in that room, I felt so humiliated. I was so embarrassed. I really just I all I wanted to do is just place the save, get it in. I was already feeling nervous about it myself.

I really needed the the support of my colleague. Really needed. I really needed you. I needed that help. But instead what I felt was a lack of support. I felt targeted getting into that conversation session and also understanding like what you just said is that the other person might not be in the position to hear it. Maybe they don't have that same emotional intelligence, but being very clear and comfortable with your own feelings.

For me, I feel like it's about entitlement to your feelings, like feeling entitled to those feelings and feeling comfortable about setting a boundary with someone, right.

Renee Thompson

And being honest with someone about not only your feelings, but again, going back to something that they did that created you know, it's not that the person, you know, they they say you can't make a certain person or any person feel a certain way. However you can certainly create that opportunity for somebody to feel that way. But what we find, too, is many times the person on the receiving end of that feedback isn't receptive to it.

And you know where I share that I was having a rough day and then I, you know, said to my husband, I'm feeling frustrated and this is why my husband is one of the kindest beings I've ever met in my life. And he was so open to it. And we had a conversation about it and it went well and then everything was fine.

My ex-husband. Okay, no way. If I would have said I'm feeling frustrated. And this is why he would have flipped out on me. So not everybody's open to that. And hence why human behavior is so complex and why bullying and incivility continue in health care is because you've got all of these variables that without helping people, at least with the skills and tools they need to confront disruptive behaviors, like in the moment when they happen and, you know, hold people accountable, it just continues.

And then you've got a lot of times what's happening right now, you have these brand new nurses who are coming in and talk about being eaten alive because they're not as prepared as new nurses were in the past, you know, pre pandemic. And it's actually creating an opportunity for them to go find work somewhere else. And so we're finding that they're leaving because not that they're making $2 more an hour down the road.

They're leaving because of how they're being treated by their coworkers and they don't have the social skills. And I'm going to say they as a collective, they not just the new nurses, it's all of us are just not equipped with the. So we're not taught the social skills to be able to have those uncomfortable conversations with each other.

And that's actually one of the things that we focus on, is giving people the scripts, the tolls that we get so granular, say these words to this person when they do this again, you know, just to give them the tools that they need.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, sometimes people just don't even know where to start or they don't to what you said, they don't have the script. Sometimes you need to have a script just to be able to say this behavior is not acceptable, right?

Renee Thompson

It's not okay.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, I'm not okay with you treating me this way. I'm not okay with you talking to me this way. And I will say that earlier, you I think you mentioned something. Not everyone deserves your vulnerability.

Renee Thompson

Right? Exactly.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah. There are people that deserve our vulnerability. They're people that we love and care about. The colleagues that have been our friends for ten, 15 years, they're having a bad day. They say something, right? That comes across in a way that is less than supportive.

Renee Thompson

Ah, and we can all misbehave. Every one of us.

Cara Lunsford

We've all had our moments. I would say that if you think that you've never been an offender of this, I think it's unlikely. We've all caught ourselves. Think about like the one time that you're talking about that new resident that just came in and you're like, Wow, dumber than a bucket, a hair like that. What? How did this person make it through med school?

And we laugh about it. We joke about it sometimes it's us with our colleagues that have been around ten years and we're like, Oh God, you know, like, this is going to be a doozy. And we might think that it's not hurtful or that it doesn't hurt the culture because we think we're saying it in jest or we think we're joking, or it's just become such a part of our culture that you can easily find yourself in it.

Going back to that whole thing of like, if you wouldn't say something to someone's face, probably not a good idea to say it to other people.

Renee Thompson

We smile. Body triangulation. So I have an issue with you care about. I don't say anything to you, but I tell our other coworker, you know, Tina, I tell her all about it. You have no opportunity to make it better because you don't even know that what you did offended me in some way or was an issue. But Tina knows all about it.

And, you know, we see this so frequently, it's probably, I would say one of the top three ways disruptive behaviors show up. And it's very subtle. People don't think, you know, eye rolling and gossip and this type of triangulation is, oh, so it's just, you know, venting.

Cara Lunsford

Yes, they think they're venting. They think they're just venting or we minimize it in some way. We say, I was just venting. I'm not I'm not really upset about this. All right. Yeah.

Renee Thompson

Because we're uncomfortable having an honest conversation with someone. And there's a strategy that we teach, and it starts with giving other people permission to give you feedback first. So again, Carol, let's say you and I are working together. It's me approaching you first and saying, Hey, Kara, if I ever do anything that you find disrespectful or if I miss something, if I make a mistake, okay, I want you to come and tell me first.

And I promise you two things. First of all, I'll be open to it. I won't say, Oh, like you never do anything. Okay? And get all defensive. And I promise I'll do the same for you. So if you really want to create a culture of peer to peer accountability and feedback, it starts with each one of us giving other people permission to give us feedback first.

And I always say, serve the people as you said that. Yeah, I've worked with you for 15 years. I know you and you know I care about you. Start with those people. Don't start with the person. As soon as you see, you have to work with them. Like you have a surge of hydrochloric acid in your stomach. You know, you lose your peripheral vision.

You think, oh my God, it's going to be a terrible chef because you have to work with that person. Don't start there. Start with someone you already have a good relation ship with so that you can start really influencing other people to do the same. Talk to each other, not about each other. Game changer. Game changer.

Cara Lunsford

Yep. That is such good advice. I would also piggyback on that and say when you are going to talk with each other or when you're going to give information to someone about how you receive information or how you best receive information. I think knowing yourself really well is important. We all have to know ourselves and get curious about ourselves and truly understand how we best process information and where we best process information, because then we can communicate with someone and say, If I do something that offends you or hurts you in some way, I want to hear about it.

Here's the best way to approach me about this.

Renee Thompson

That's great.

Cara Lunsford

And being really clear about, Hey, if I bring something up to you when would you prefer it? After work. Before work? During a break. Do you have a preference about when I provide you with feedback because you want it to be successful? And if you catch people in times when it's not working for them or they're stressed out, you're probably not going to have a successful exchange.

Renee Thompson

I think that's such great advice. It's giving people permission to give you feedback and letting them know how you like to receive feedback. That does require, as you said earlier, you need to do some self-reflection and and you know, thyself. It's and a lot of people don't know how they show up. They don't they've never done a personality test.

They don't give it any thought. And I think as we grow and age and grow in our profession and our competence, you know, when you're brand new nurse, it's survival mode. You're all about you're so focused on what do I have to do to make sure my patients stay alive and that, you know, I get everything done in my shift.

You're so focused on the tasks because that's where you need to focus. Is about. I always say orientation is only to make sure that they're safe to practice. That's it. I mean, they're not done cooking yet. They need continued development. But then as you mature and you grow, that's when you have the capacity. You have the capacity. You may not be taking advantage of that to really start looking at how I come across.

You know, we do a lot with communication styles. Do I come across as a little aggressive or maybe I'm passive or passive aggressive, okay. Versus assertive. We see this all the time. And I talk a lot about, you know, I remember myself being a bedside nurse, giving giving report to certain nurses. I would literally be stressed and so anxious knowing I had to give rapport to certain nurses because they would nit pick me to death.

They would try to find one thing that I didn't know and then make me feel stupid, You know, Of course they can't make me feel stupid, but I felt stupid. And so what I once people say, Yes, I'm a nit picker. Yes, I roll my eyes. Yes, this is what I do, is to then tell people, Hey, I know sometimes I can come across as being a little nit picky.

If I do that, please let me know. Because sometimes, you know, I'm not even aware I'm doing it because again, some people just aren't self aware. If I ever come across as being aggressive, please let me know If I ever come across as being fill in the blank, let me know. And then if somebody does call you on it, please don't rip their head off.

Okay? Like you have to be open to it as part of. None of us are perfect. We're all working on becoming a stronger team. We're working on improving our culture. And it always starts with each individual person turning the mirror back on themselves to see how they show up every single day. It's easy to point fingers at everyone else.

You know that. So much easier, much harder to turn that finger back towards yourself.

Cara Lunsford

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And everything that you have brought to this conversation from just identifying when you're in one of these difficult situations is to how to best in a scripted way, give some some very scripted responses. Can you give an example of that really quick? Because I know that you. Yeah. So give me give me a give me a good scripted response.

Renee Thompson

We have our like three confronting strategies. We call them name it speak. It's scripted. Okay. So scripting is really a support for the name. It get crystal clear on what the behavior is and then just name it. You're yelling at me in front of everyone. You're criticizing me. You just rolled your eyes at me. You just called me stupid.

Okay? All you do. And it's a lot easier when the behavior is overt so everybody can see it. Everybody can hear it. It's so much easier than that passive aggressive type of, you know, covert behavior. So just start with overt. If somebody walks away from you and refuses to get report, you're walking away from me. Are you refusing to take report from me like you just keep it objective.

This has nothing to do with why they might be doing this, but just be very objective and name the behavior that would helps you to do that is again with the scripting. So we have so many scripts. We have two resources right now. One is three scripts and it's four leaders who don't know what to say in the moment.

Okay? When they're dealing with a disruptive employee and our power scripts are four employees. So coworker to coworker. So we have two different ones. But it's things like, you know, I'm not sure you're aware of this, but sometimes you can come across as nitpicky. I'm not sure you're aware of this. Sometimes you can come across as intimidating or condescending.

So the script is, I'm not sure you're aware of this. And then you add in what the behavior is and it helps you to open up the door to having a conversation. It's funny, I have a YouTube video series called Coffee and Conversations about Nerd Bullying, and it's basically me sitting in a chair with a cup of coffee talking about bad behavior.

And I had my daughter on as a guest. My daughter's a schoolteacher, and she had shared with me that somebody that they had hired another teacher was really being rude to her and would say really insulting things to her only in front of other people. And my daughter said she was embarrassed, like she embarrassed her, but she didn't know what to say because she didn't want to try it.

He didn't want to zing her back or embarrass her. So of course, she reached out to me and she talks about this on the the the video where I told her, I said, Kate, I want you to practice the script. I'm offended by that comment. Just practice it. Practice It because I don't know if you're like me, when somebody catches me off guard and they embarrass me in the moment, I don't know what to say.

Like, I freeze. I'm like. Like, I don't know what to say, but the next day in the shower, oh, I can think of all sorts of things to say, but, you know, by then it's too late. So because in the moment you go into that fight or flight response. So if you have a script, you have a situation that you're dealing with, you pick an appropriate script.

In my daughter's case, I said, I'm offended by that comment. You practice it so that in the moment when it happens again, you can pull it out, You're ready to go. So my daughter, she did. And she was funny in the video, like I was waiting. I was waiting for her to say something. And sure enough, she did.

So my daughter looked at her and said, I'm offended by that comment. My daughter turned around. This teacher said, Oh, you know, I'm just messing with you. You know, you know, I'm just kidding around. So my daughter turned back around and just said, I'm offended by that comment. My daughter was funny. She says, I don't know what else to say.

Said, I just knew I had to say that while she worked with that teacher for another year and a half, that teacher never did anything like that to her again. Scripting works most of the time. Not all of the time I'll take most. Okay, But it really does. It's just to let somebody know that their behavior is not okay.

And then we, you know, speak. It is honest and respectful. You need to be honest with people and respect them at the same time to engage in a conversation with them.

Cara Lunsford

Absolutely. And I think that what you said about she repeated it because that's when that teacher came back and said, oh, you know, you know, I was just joking around and, you know, I was just kidding. Like, I, I didn't mean anything by that. Repeating it and doubling down and saying I was offended by that comment.

Renee Thompson

Yeah.

Cara Lunsford

Right. Because what it does is it puts it back over on the person, right? And now they have to do something with that. And if you choose not to engage in that conversation or to make them feel better, because I think sometimes we have this tendency when we can tell that the other person is now feeling bad in some way or they're uncomfortable, that sometimes when we're empaths, empathetic people, I think a lot of nurses are we are empaths.

That's why we're good at our job that immediately we go to, Well, let me make that person feel better.

Renee Thompson

Yes, it's called fawning, which I didn't know this term until recently, where, you know, fight or flight fight or flight freeze or FON when you're so uncomfortable finding is so my if my daughter would have said to that teacher, Yeah, don't worry about it. I know you're just kidding. You're a jokester. That's fawning. And to your point, Cara, it's because we're so in.

My daughter's very empathic, okay? She doesn't want anybody to feel uncomfortable, So you'll downplay it, which is exactly what perpetuates it. And yeah, I'm so glad it was just because I kept saying her, Just repeat it. You know, you just say those words and it stop the behavior. It's very similar to when somebody apologizes to you for treating you with disrespect and you say, it's okay, don't worry about it.

No, because what you're doing now is you're letting them know that feelings didn't matter, that, you know, you're giving them an out. And instead, what we should really say is, thank you for apologizing. I've caught myself doing that even an email. So sorry I didn't get back to you or so sorry for this. And I catch myself actually saying, Oh, I'm sorry.

You know, my apologies. There are times, though, that I started paying it because a lot of times it's like, no worries, don't worry about it. If it really was not a big deal. But other times somebody disrespect did my time because right now there's nothing more important to me than my time and my family, especially my grandbabies. Okay.

And if you disrespect my time, that's affecting the time I have with my grandbabies. So when somebody I feel disrespected my time and they apologize, I say thank you for apologizing because I'm right. Yes. Thank you for apologizing. This was a big deal for me. Broke things happen, but I don't downplay it. Thank you for apologizing. So it's very similar to.

Yeah, and I didn't actually think of it that way. But repeating that when somebody says, oh, you know, I'm just kidding because that's just a defense mechanism that reinforces that know what you said or how you treated me is not okay. I yeah, that that's great care.

Cara Lunsford

This is just a subject that I'm so passionate about. And I always say, if I wasn't a if I wasn't a nurse, I'd be a sociology major. I love the study of people. I'm fascinated by human behavior and probably why you're so good at what you do. Because you're also fascinated in care, too.

Renee Thompson

We're like sisters, basically.

Cara Lunsford

Yeah, absolutely. Lutely Well, I would love to do so much more with you because I think the work that you're doing is incredibly necessary and it is what is going to help with the sustainability of this of this profession.

Renee Thompson

Yeah, Thank you.

Cara Lunsford

And so if anyone is looking for you and they want to learn more, tell our listeners where they can go and find.

Renee Thompson

You can pretty much go everywhere and find us. But really the easiest thing to do is go to our website It's Healthy Workforce Institute dot com and there you can find all of our resources. And if you scroll all the way down to the bottom, you can find where we are on social media. I'm on LinkedIn a lot on Facebook or new to Instagram.

We just launched an Instagram site I guess a month ago, three weeks ago, so we would love to have more followers. But yeah, just go to the Healthy Workforce Institute dot com and check out what we have. We have something for everyone.

Cara Lunsford

Can this be brought in? Can can a nurse ask for this to be a nurse or a physician or anybody in health care ask for this to be brought into their institution? Are you working directly with these hospitals.

Renee Thompson

Almost every day? Yes. Yeah, we do a lot. We have an online academy. We do a lot of speaking, a lot of workshops, training. We do a lot of consulting. I probably spend more of my time now consulting. So we actually go into an organization and we work hip to hit with the leaders and their teams to really transform their cultures.

But we always say there's something for every person and every budget, even starting free. You know, we write a blog, we have our videos. I my own podcast. So we talk about disruptive behaviors. We have resources people can download, and that's all free. We also have books. You know, I've written several books and then we have our online academy.

But there's put it this way, there's so much sometimes people are a little overwhelmed. If you are and you need help, just message us. There's a contact form on our website and we'll help you figure out what's the best next step for you.

Cara Lunsford

That's so great. It sounds like you've really done a top down, bottom up approach.

Renee Thompson

Top down, bottom up, and everything in between approach. Because if we're going to truly solve this problem, it can't be any one role, It can't be any one level. It's got to be all of us. So we actually really focus on the whole interprofessional team. It's not just nurses, you know, it's not just bedside nurses, It's not just the leaders.

It's all of us working together to solve this problem.

Cara Lunsford

This has been one of my favorite interviews. This season, for sure. And and I'm really excited for our listeners to learn more about the Healthy Workforce Institute, to reach out to you to get support, personal, professional, and also just for your organization. If it's something that you think you're organization could benefit from, Please, please, please reach out to Dr. Renee Thompson at the Healthy Workforce Institute and and really get those tools, those tools and resources that you need to thrive in your career.

Renee Thompson

Thank you. Care. I always say, just as a reminder, the way we treat each other is really it should be just as important as the good care that we provide. And we have important work to do as nurses. And I would say no time for the shenanigans that are out there. And so anything we can do to help you and your organization, we'd be happy to.

Thank you.

Cara Lunsford

So much. Thank you and have a great next interview so far.

Renee Thompson

You're the best part of my day, though. This is so patient. So thank you, Carol.

Cara Lunsford

Thank you so much, Doctor Renee.

Renee Thompson

All right. Thank you. Take care.

Cara Lunsford

Take care. Bye bye.

If you're a nurse or.

Renee Thompson

A nursing.

Cara Lunsford

Student who enjoyed this episode, don't forget to join us on the nurse dot com app where you can find the nurse dot discussion group, a place where we dissect each episode in detail and delve deeper into today's topics. Nurse Dot is a nurse dot com original podcast series Production music and sound editing by Dawn Lunsford, Production Coordination by Rhea Wade, Additional editing by John Wells.

Thank you to all the listeners for tuning in to the Nurse Dot podcast. Until next time, keep spreading the love and the care.